BUDAPEST (REUTERS) - A Hungarian security officer fired three warning shots early on Tuesday (Jan 28) after about 60 migrants tried to force their way through a checkpoint on the border with Serbia, and Serbian police said later they had arrested 37 people for trying to cross the frontier illegally.

No one was wounded in the incident, which took place at the Roszke/Horgos border crossing, Hungarian police spokeswoman Szilvia Szabo said.

Hungarian police said the group tried to enter the European Union member state at the crossing at about 4.30am GMT (12.30pm Singapore time), prompting the security officer on site to fire the warning shots.

There are thousands of migrants stuck in Serbia, with more than 6,000 migrants living in government-operated camps.

On Tuesday, in the village of Horgos, on the Serbian side of the border crossing, a group of about two dozen migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Morocco said they were beaten up by Hungarian police and sent back to Serbia.

Some showed cuts and bruises, but Reuters was not able to verify their accounts.

“My friends they have tried to cross the border and the police of Hungary, they reacted badly about that, they were hitting them, they broke their phones,” said Mohab, a migrant from Morocco, who acted as an interpreter for the group.

“They shoot bullets in the air and people run,” he said.

The crossing was the scene of a large-scale riot at the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, when police clashed with hundreds trying to break through the frontier into the EU.

The Straits Times

We have been experiencing some problems with subscriber log-ins and apologise for the inconvenience caused. Until we resolve the issues, subscribers need not log in to access ST Digital articles. But a log-in is still required for our PDFs.